25 August: Boreham on James Watt

The Evolution of Transport
The extraordinary importance of all matters of transport makes it interesting to reflect that we mark today the anniversary of the death of the locomotive pioneer, James Watt. Those who would adequately appreciate the value of the work of those mechanical pioneers must endeavour to think their way back to the days prior to September 27, 1825—the days when locomotives were unknown. Let them, for example, reflect upon the trifling but significant circumstance that when James Watt made his first journey from Glasgow to London he was nearly a fortnight on the road. Nor was that particular pilgrimage abnormally prolonged. In those days the long and toilsome journey to the metropolis was seldom undertaken, being regarded by most Scotsmen as a hazardous adventure requiring no small resources of courage and endurance. Watt himself tells us that, whenever some intrepid spirit announced his intention of setting out for London, special prayers for his safety were publicly offered in church. All our historians express astonishment that, in those times, so little attention was devoted to the high roads of England. "Those highways," says one of the best authorities, "were far worse than might have been expected from the degree of wealth and civilisation which the nation had attained. The ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and there was little or nothing to distinguish the road, especially after dusk, from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides of it. The most experienced travellers often lost the track altogether and were compelled to spend the night in the open." Pepys and his wife, had just such an experience, and the garrulous diarist gives us, as a result, an entertaining account of the roads over which he passed. The mud lay deep on both sides, he says, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. It is possible today to travel from Hobart to London in less time than, at the dawn of the Nineteenth Century, it took to journey from London to Edinburgh.

The Stagnant Centuries
It follows, therefore, that, from the foundation of the world to the age of steam, little or nothing had been done to abridge the distances that separated place from place. The tattooed barbarians who occupied the British Isles before the arrival of Julius Caesar could have covered the distance from Glasgow to London in the time taken by Watt. The horses that drew the chariots of the Pharaohs were at least as fast as the fastest vehicle in which George the Fourth travelled. For countless centuries the world had been content to stand still. Then the new day—the day of the engineer—suddenly dawned. And that new day was the first of a long series of sensational days. For history hold in honour two distinct classes of workers. The men of the first class lived their lives, toiled at their tasks, and achieved their triumphs. But there the matter ends; they did all it was necessary to do and posterity holds their names in gratitude and admiration. The names in the second class, however, represent a few dominating personalities whose glory it is that they set posterity thinking and acting. The work which they achieved personally is as nothing when compared with the work they moved their successors to accomplish. The hands of these restless men are never really removed from the affairs to which they were once so vigorously applied. Workers of this sublime stamp may fall into their graves, but such an eventuality constitutes itself the merest incident in the course of their private and personal careers. It scarcely interrupts the progressive continuity of their life work for they have presented the world with ideals which the world is impatient to materialise. They bequeath to their successors shadowy hints, vague premonitions, and crepuscular suggestions which, long afterwards, shape the entire course of human destiny. Being dead they yet speak, and with electrical effect. They still lead the march of mind. They have dreamed on dreams that are only fulfilled long after they themselves have passed from the scene of their labours. We have but to think of the puffing, snorting, creaking little blunderbuss with which Stephenson startled the citizens of Darlington, and then to transfer our imagination to the amazing contrivances that now undertake similar tasks, to convince ourselves that men like Watt and Stephenson belong to this second roll of honour. And, however sensational the innovations of the future may prove to be, they will only enhance the lustre with which the names of the pioneers must always shine.

Dawn Of A New Day
Perhaps the best evidence of the necessity for the railway train was the opposition that it excited. That fierce antagonism reveals the parochialism of the people. All over the country there were scores of thousands of men and women who regarded the railway engine as an infernal machine. The construction of the first lines led to riots in almost every village through which they passed. As soon as the rails were laid down, violent hands tore them up again. People lived in a severe isolation and they dreaded the larger life to which the railway train would introduce them. "Each little community," says Mr. Robert Mackenzie in his "History of the Nineteenth Century," sat apart from its fellows, following its own customs, cherishing its own prejudices, feeding on its own traditions, speaking in a dialect which men from a distance failed to understand. A stranger was ipso facto an enemy. There were villages in England in which the inhabitants incited their dogs to attack any outsider whose curiosity led him to visit them." Mr. Mackenzie goes on, to show that the railway engine transformed everything. Men of different towns, of different counties, were permitted freely to meet; to learn how little there was on either side to hate, how much to love; to establish ties of commercial relationship; to correct errors of opinion by friendly conflict of mind. The dormant love of travelling, by which Nature protects men from the evils of isolation, awoke so vigorously that, within 50 years of the advent of Stephenson's little engine, the railways of England conveyed 600,000,000 passengers. The result was inevitable. The man who travels is transported not merely into another locality but into an ampler condition of existence. He becomes a citizen of immensity. The railway engine became a shuttle weaving into one splendid fabric the scattered and detached fragments of English life. Politics, education, commerce, industry—all things, indeed, were revolutionised by its coming. Every man who takes the trouble to contrast the conditions of life in 1825 with those with which we ourselves are familiar will join in doing honour to the memory of the illustrious engineer whose constructive foresight made possible so radical and beneficial a change.

F W Boreham

Image: James Watt